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Sometimes I ask why me?
Sometimes, the night is darker than should be
Or the light just a tad too bright for me
Sometimes the water is Antarctica on my skin
Or I seek Antarctica to bring peace to my skin.

But why me with
These words to say what I feel and make you
Feel the light bouncing off a distant view,
Floating before your silent eyelids, telling
Tales from long ago, waking memories yelling
From your childhood, singing a song you knew,
But now forgot?

With these words healing through me,
Binding through me, loving through the vessel I am,
When a pen or keyboard stealthily lift up the dam
And the flood cannot keep, and the whole world holds its breath
While history fills up, but the Earth in all its breadth
Cannot answer, and I must just be still seeking, still me.

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Whoa! I have never seen this one before!
Diamonds sparkling where trees swayed, casting
Their awestruck projections of myriad rainbows
Upon our faces, and straight to our hearts.
What feeling is this?
This brings me back to that day on the boat,
When salvation changed my trade, and made the day after
Never the same.
How can I describe this post-war type
Peace that pervades my heart like a first breath,
Like a first love?
Even the fragrance of white lilies swims into
My nostrils, are the others getting this?
Who is that? Wow, that beard, that robe.
I know.
I know.
I know.
This is amazing, should I talk to him?
Should I inquire what he did when we left him behind?
Should I…wait, and who’s that now?
Oh the beautiful chariot of fire. Chariot of fire? Chariot of…
My goodness, are we really here? Rabbi, is this where
We are promised?
Is this where we shall find rest after it all?
Rabbi, this feeling should last forever.
These bright bedazzled rocks, the sweet music
That paints joy all around us subtly,
These smells never before smelled,
All this should last forever.

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There are times that life gets so complicated that you lose hope, that you believe that you are just a mistake in God’s master-plan. In those moments, you may wish to be in a movie.

Like in the Lion King, where all goes bad, then here comes Rafiki with the water reflection trick to make you see yourself, you wish for that epiphany. Then you say to yourself it will never happen…well maybe here it is

My soul is longing for peace,
My mind is working on the fleece of the wool of redemption.
Dad always said the only solution to anything was preemption,
But …that’s not helping now, I need magic beans, or even peas.

I’ve scraped my knees
Against the floor, bruised my thighs like a failed sliding tackle
And broken my fingers with nothing to show but my lost battles
Hanging like trophies in a hive deserted of bees.

I’ve seen life seethe,
And stink to the brim with no solace, direction or intention,
Smelt the reek as if each of my steps would take me up the proverbial creek
Yet my Sisyphus reward is to walk still and breathe

Yet you Lord look me
Deep within the soul at that time I dare not look at a mirror
And see more than gold where I sense but ghouls and cheap horror
But dare not call for help ashamed and cuddling my defeat.

You see the meat,
Where I see only decay clinging to bones as the flies tug,
Cheese where I see but milk going away as the flies would tug
And You call to me, and call again while I pull up my bed sheets.

Totally hid I feel,
Yet You still see, still call, still love, still long
For that seed you sowed to bask in the raining glow of the sun
And dance to the tune of photosynthesis and mitosis and start to reel

Totally dead I feel,
For undeserving, I am served with the most beautiful voice
Of hope from a fellow human sent by You, I push away the buoys
You send because this despair loves this creek stroking the keel.

But you Lord look me,
And beckon louder, and louder, and louder, each bellow more potent
Than the previous, and like trees swaying by the wind bent
I feel the soul you gave me reach for the rudder, but me

I love this creek,
So I pull it away. But you beckon even louder and louder and louder,
And maybe that’s when I hear the prayer my soul’s slowly powdered
On my days in the silence of my subconscious, courageous and meek

I love this creek,
Lord, but it hurts to be this deep. I’m accepting what I can’t change
Just like you advised. Don’t pull me out, I don’t deserve any chance.
That’s my conscious rationalising. But I sense my soul’s subtle leaks.

The transcripts are in,
It calls to its Maker in hidden text, and writes lengthy memos,
I’d not read. I’m starting to hate this creek through its demos.
Maybe it’s time to leave. But will you Lord take me back in?

And call on me,
To cast my burdens, to cast the yoke I have piled on my shoulder
And leave the creek wherein I’ve been rolling up the evil boulder,
To come home: your love gives me hope, your love heals.

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Right now in my city, there are so many traffic jams, I’m cursing Sogea Satom for the way they are handling the whole construction project they are on. It will soon be over, but daily the anger born from stillness eats my insides like Edgar Poe’s Raven.

I still think they could do more, and that we the citizens could help them by being more civil and cooperating with the cops to reduce this frustration. Well, till we figure that out…it’s me, the car, and the clock.

The engine grumbles,
Rain washes away my joy
No birds are singing

Just unwanted ticks
Infecting the dashboard clock
Staring time away

The engine grumbles,
Rain plays with my heart, its toy
Seeding anger, more

And it grows to trees,
So tall the raven would nest
And infest with eggs

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I’m mostly skin-colour blind, but in this post I want to reflect on the struggles within the black communities.

You know that moment you have to protect your kids from some particularly mean neighbour? Well you won’t be protecting them if you did the same to them would you? The question to most blacks is: “How much do black lives matter to you?” More than your money? More than your tummy? More than playing life with that fine body? More than greed?

The title is inspired from Don Cheadle’s line : “Another Dead Niggers Association”, while talking to Kendrick on Kendrick Lamar’s hit song D.N.A. This song looks at the heritage of the black communities and the conclusion is quite poignant: “Sex, Money, Murder – Our DNA”. You can read more about it on Genius.com.

.

Einstein is asleep in a Bepanda rubbish heap.
Newton is learning how to swim in Soweto poop.
Shakespeare is slumped in a car with extra lead
Losing the grams he suddenly gained on a Vegas road,
Then Dumas does same: different street, same oozing scenery.

D.N.A.

Is it a case of which or is it that each black life actually matters?
The geniuses seem to be electrons in the society’s first chapter,
Then the atom goes positive in self-wrought treachery

D.N.A.

You took Dube for his car, Njawe for his mouth, Lumumba for his mind, Pac
For his revolution, X for his convictions, Luther for his wisdom, Sankara,
For his vision, And their names scream from an unending roster in front of Peter.

Dead Negus Association

Then our mothers turn preemptive and kill
The next Mozart for fear of hunger, dump
The next Leke for fear of parental anger.

Where are the tears in these instants where the now seems better for all?
How to un-wrench my heart when the news comes out the radio speaker,
And the souls fly around one last time before going unaccomplished back home?

The miracle of the genetic mutation that brings genius to uplift our communities mostly gets lost earlier than on the blueprint:
Each gone by a gun or its mum.

(c) Nyonglema

People will treat you the way you treat yourselves. May blacks love their neighbour more so that hating you doesn’t look anymore like something you taught everybody. Love black lives

You’d think “Maybe” if you listened to the complaints about Sogea-Satom’s slow operation lasting beyond schedule and creating craters cradling cars to sleep in watery coffins.
It’s 5:30pm, I’m on my way home.
Slowly in first gear through one I go.
Slowly through the second I go.
No. I tell you they aren’t civil.

I brake.

To my right are two lanes of cars blocking pedestrians trying to stomp the pavement, and the cars honk as if right, and fight for right of way, while the police stare dismayed, and the rest on the normal way display anger, frustrated for they know all those will go first, not they, unless they go for the throat of the pedestrians and throw care away.

Clutch out, first gear, it moves. I brake.

There’s been days 10km turned to 100
And days 10km became as long as a trip to Kenya
When from the airport the person boarding calls you in traffic, “I have arrived”, and you bash your brains on the steering in a Kobain tantrum, and look right at those civilians as a bunch of Brady Ians when you consider they aren’t civil.

Clutch out, accelerate a little, and then brake.

One’s trying to skip the line in front of you as the police arrive and raise an index finger to remind them that the pavements are for feet, and it’s a car a lane, and she struggles with you not caring if her rush to arrive is marred by her marring your patient eagerness to see your home by scratches and dents on metal…hopefully she doesn’t.

Accelerate, brake, my soul breaks.

What’s wrong with these people? The same sad song daily, and the same solutions are brought daily, but learning is water on a ducks back so…